Sustainable Forests

  The federal government borrows 40 cents for every dollar it spends. That's why America's national debt just passed  $20 trillion, with  $186 trillion more in longterm future unfunded liabilities. There was a time when the Forest Service paid for itself and added hundreds of millions of dollars back to the American people via timber sales and mineral leases. Now, like every other bloated bureaucracy: the Forest Service has become a black hole where hard earned taxpayer money goes to die, along with public lands being incinerated.

Until the passage of the Northwest Forest Management Act of 1993, the US Forest Service contributed more to the national treasury than it cost to operate the agency. As an added bonus: bark beetle infestations and landscape erasing megafires didn't exist. Proof that not every bill passed by Congress to protect the forest is based on sound policy.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that: (1) timber sales receipts for fiscal years 1992 through 1994 totalled nearly $3 billion; (2) the Forest Service distributed about 90 percent of those receipts to various Forest Service accounts for specific purposes; (3) specific distribution percentages for the Roads and Trails Fund and payments to states are mandated by law; (4) other accounts include those for reforestation, timber salvage, brush removal and erosion control, purchaser-built road credits, and interest and penalties; (5) although at the national level more monies were collected than distributed, some regions and forests distributed more monies than they collected; (6) the Forest Service deposited about $302.7 million in the Treasury's General Fund,

http://www.gao.gov/products/RCED-95-237FS